


The Cold Pizza

by lesbianoodle



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Everyone Is Gay, F/F, Humanstuck, M/M, Pale Romance | Moirallegiance, Time Travel, Timeline Shenanigans
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-17
Updated: 2016-08-25
Packaged: 2018-08-09 10:21:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7798081
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lesbianoodle/pseuds/lesbianoodle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A time-travelling pizza guy, his best friend from the future, a short angry hemophobe, and a blind comic book writer join forces to stop the president being assassinated and save the world from destruction. </p><p>OR: Dave sucks at delivering pizza.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Cancer." Terezi circles the horoscope in her magazine with a red marker and peers at it eagerly, "Changes are coming in your life and you shouldn't fear them. You need to put your trust into people, especially new acquaintances." 

"Sounds like bullshit a shitpost generator would vomit all over my tumblr dash." Karkat says, dismissively. He's sat on the couch, watching a movie on their TV that's so old that half the pixels on the screen are dead, with his roommate sat on the other end of the couch. Terezi is lazing with her legs sprawled across his lap and a crappy magazine in her hands. 

"Sounds like typical Cancer to me." Terezi teases, even though she doesn't believe in that crap either, "Let's see... Libra! Your profound search for knowledge will lead you into a difficult situation this week. Don't let your reckless side get the better of you." 

"Libra: your pointless search for answers in a magazine for twelve year old girls will lead you into a difficult situation when your roommate gets tired of it and kicks you out." That's as far as he gets before Terezi throws a cushion at him and he's KO'd. Not really. But the zip does catch and he gets a small cut on his cheek, which makes him swear. 

"Karkles, are you okay?" Terezi asks, when he doesn't start yelling immediately, and she puts the magazine on the coffee table so that she can lead forward. Her fingers brush against his face and that's when he realises that he must be bleeding. Karkat could puke. Ever since he was a little kid, he hasn't been able to face the sight of blood. It makes him feel faint like he's going to pass out. Terezi used to call him a pussy until he passed out in the bathroom that one time and she realised how serious it was. 

She disappears to get him a band-aid and Karkat stays there with his eyes shut, wishing he wasn't so pathetic about things like this. Maybe a fear of blood is a result of childhood trauma or something. It can't just come from nowhere. 

There's the sound of footsteps against the hardwood floor before she collapses back onto the couch beside him and peels the back off a band-aid. Carefully, she covers the scratch with it and then, Karkat opens his eyes again. The blind girl- though she hasn't been blind since her surgery, the nickname has stuck- grins at him like she just saved him from a burning building. Then, she calls him pathetic in a friendly kind of way and pats him on the head. He returns to watching the 80% of movie that isn't ruined by the clusters of dead pixels and Terezi returns to annoying him. She forces him to take the quiz to find out what his ideal boyfriend is like. 

Then, the doorbell rings and she looks at him pointedly, waiting for him to answer it. Since she paid for the pizza, he's got to get the door and he sighs. They live in one of those apartments with the intercoms and he buzzes to let the pizza guy into the lobby, telling him to wait there. Maybe he could have made the pizza guy walk all the way up the stairs but that seems unfair somehow. So, he walks down four flights of stairs to meet him. He still doesn't know why he always seems to get stuck collecting the pizza from the lobby, since Terezi is much physically fitter than he is. She works out for fun with her girlfriend. 

The pizza guy is waiting in the lobby. "Yo." 

And Karkat does a double-take. 

Because the pizza guy is hot. He should be modelling, not delivering pizzas. He's tall, taller than Karkat but everybody is, and slim, at least in comparison to the stout and disproportioned Karkat. His skin is reasonably light, a similar tone to Terezi's hispanic girlfriend, but his hair is white. White-blonde. And curling around his face like a halo. And he has those stupid stretchers in his ear lobes like white boys pretending to be ethnic normally get. Karkat is flustered. 

Then, he pulls himself together. "Took you long enough to bring the pizza, shithead. Does your boss pay you to be late?" 

"Chill, man. I'm only ten minutes later. Five minutes later and you'd be getting this pizza for free; want me to go walk around the block for five minutes to make it up to you?" The (hot) pizza guy raises one eyebrow so high that it disappears into his floppy hair. 

"Ugh, just give me the pizza." Karkat reaches for it but the pizza guy stops him. 

"Hold your horses there, kid. I'm gonna have to see some ID." He says, just to be even more annoying. For the first time, Karkat notices that the pizza guy has not taken his sunglasses off, even though he's now been standing inside for a good five minutes. And he gives the pizza guy a exasperated look but the pizza guy just grins. "C'mon, kid. ID." 

"I'm older than you, asshat. I'm not a kid." Karkat says, digging around in his pockets and coming up with nothing, "I don't have any ID." 

"Then, you can't have the pizza, Mr Rainbow Rumpus Fruity Partytown." The pizza guy says. 

For a moment, Karkat is puzzled. Then, he remembers that Terezi ordered the pizza and that she always slaps some stupid name on the order. He's spent years picking up pizzas ordered by The Legislacerator and The Signless- she likes to use characters from those comic books she likes. And Karkat always ends up looking like an idiot. 

"I'm going to kill her." He mutters, rolling his eyes at his roommate's idiocy; he can just picture her laughing her ass off upstairs, "Listen up, dumbass. My roommate ordered this pizza and she paid for it, so just let me have the stupid thing before it gets cold and we have to order another one." 

"Dude, cold pizza is great." The pizza guy says, simply. He's still holding the pizza out of Karkat's grasp and looking extremely smug about. 

Karkat sighs and turns back to the stairs. "Wait here. I'll get Terezi." 

He starts up the stairs but he realises that the pizza guy is following him anyway. He almost tells him not to bother, just wait down here in the lobby, but this asshole has caused him enough problems and deserves the journey up the stairs. Karkat left the door locked and his keys inside so, much to his shame, he has to knock on the door like an idiot. The door is answered by a very smug looking girl in a pair of cotton pyjama shorts and a band t-shirt. 

"Problem, Karkles?" She cackles, ruffling his hair in the way that she knows he hates; living with Terezi is like living with an incredibly annoying younger sister most of the time, "Ooh, and you brought a cute friend with you. Hello, Mr Pizza Guy." 

"Hi. You must be the cute roommate." The pizza guy looks the bizarre mix of confused and aroused that Terezi brings out in everybody. The thing is about her is that she's actually pretty but her personality is that of a crazy person's. She's like a weird kid in an adult's body. 

"Careful now, I'm taken." Terezi licks her lips like she's planning to eat the pizza and then the delivery guy, "You had a pizza for Mr Rainbow Rumpus Partytown?" She turns to Karkat, "You're going to have to pay for this, I don't get paid till Thursday." 

"You said you'd payed for it already!" Karkat scowls at her. She just shrugs and gestures for him to go, so that she can stay with the pizza guy. Even though she has a girlfriend, she's still the one that gets to flirt with the pizza guy. It's so unfair. 

Karkat goes to get his wallet from wherever he left it. But their apartment is a mess. That's also entirely Terezi's fault; you only have to look at Karkat's room to know that he's one of those freakily neat and clean kids raised by overly-religious helicopter parents. But somehow, his wallet isn't in the place he left it and he has to search the apartment. He digs down the back of the couch but only finds a torn comic, some old gum, and some loose change. He searches under the couch and finds an old VHS tape and a broken cellphone. 

"We don't even have a video player." He mutters, "We've never had one. Fucking Terezi." 

He's searching behind the TV when he hears a thump and a muffled yell from the door. It's the sound somebody makes when they try to yell but somebody is covering their mouth and Karkat suddenly realises he left his gullible friend with a stranger. The pizza guy could be a serial killer for all he knows. Dropping everything, he scrambles, falls, gets back up, and runs to her. 

"Terezi! Are you okay?" He asks, quickly. 

"Shit. You hear that?" She replies, in almost a whisper.

Terezi doesn't look hurt, just shocked, and gripping onto the pizza guy's arm in fear. She doesn't seem to be looking anything and Karkat is confused about what scared her. Before Karkat can make even begin to ask, she shakes her head quickly. He stares at her a little, realises how her mouth is hanging open a little.

"There was a noise. In there." The pizza guy nods towards the closet door, where they keep all the crap that doesn't have a place. Karkat takes a step towards it but the pizza guy grabs him by the wrist and pulls him back. 

"Fuck off." Karkat hisses. 

The pizza guy looks as alarmed as Terezi. "I don't think you should open that door." 

"Why the hell not?" Karkat demands, masking his uneasiness. 

The pizza guy is still holding his wrist, he realises, and his gaze drops to it. Dark fingers digging into Karkat's wrist like he can't bear to let him go- either this guy is crazy and there's something really crazy behind that closet door. Karkat can feel his heart moving in his chest now. The pizza guy has something around his wrist that looks like one of those fancy new watches made by Apple, Karkat notices and wonders how he hadn't noticed before now, but before he can get a good look, the pizza guy releases his grip on him.

"I hear it." The pizza guy says, answering Terezi's question at last.

Then, he shakes Terezi off and joins them in the hallway of the apartment and he's still holding the pizza box under his arm. It's probably cold by now, Karkat thinks, fuck. 

Him and the pizza guy and Terezi stand outside the closet door, staring at it like they don't know what to do. Honestly, Karkat isn't pretending, he really doesn't know what to do. He takes his fingers through his hair, takes a deep breath, and steps towards the closet. He can hear voices on the other side and it sends a shiver down their spine. Him and Terezi had been in all day when would anybody have had a chance to sneak in?

He kneels beside the door, presses his ear to it. Terezi is close, breathing too heavily to remain inconspicuous. The voices behind it are louder now, easier to hear, but not loud or clear enough to understand. The words just sound like muffled sounds. 

"That's us." The pizza guy mutters or something like that; louder, he says, "Karkat, open the door. Terezi, get behind me." 

"I don't need protecting, you ass." Terezi rolls her eyes.

She pushes Karkat aside and grabs the doorhandle herself. Turns it. Click. Pulls. And somebody falls onto the carpet. Karkat backs up, grabbing the nearest available object as a weapon. He wields his umbrella as fiercely as he can. 

He only has a second to look at the person lying on the carpet. Dark skin, darker hair, ragged old clothes. Just a sweater and some grey pants. They land on their elbows, narrowly avoiding hitting their back against the ground, and they lean their head back. Dark eyes, long lashes, the kind of round face that comes with a kid who never lost their puppy fat. And then, Karkat realises, that he's looking at himself. 

He's the one lying on the floor of his hallway and the other Karkat realises too, sitting up quickly. Other Karkat looks significantly more bruised but he still has one of those "skin" coloured band-aid on his cheek. The same one Terezi stuck on him only a few minutes ago. It's him... But it's not him.

"Look at that, you came out the closet." cackles a familiar voice.

Terezi, Other Terezi, steps out of the closet and stands over the Other Karkat. She looks the same but different. She's still wearing the same shirt but pants now, a red flowing cape hanging from her shoulders and reaching down to her knees. Her glasses. 

"You don't need to wear those anymore." Karkat says, without thinking, "You can see." 

"Nice observational skills, Karkles." says Other Terezi with a laugh. 

"Guys." The pizza guy is now not only standing in their hallway but in their closet too, "Grab onto me. We don't have time." 

Other Terezi grabs Other Pizza Guy by the arm. Other Karkat grabs his ankle. There's a flash of light, so bright that Karkat looks away instinctively, shielding his eyes. When the light dies down, when he looks back, there is nobody in their closet. But he knows for sure that he didn't imagine a single second of it. Judging by the shocked look on Terezi's face as she sinks down to her knees, she saw all of it too. She isn't blinking. 

Did she stare into the light? She didn't seem to turn her head back... Suddenly, Karkat isn't sure. That was the kind of light that can damage your eyes if you stare straight at it. Just like a flash of the sun in the middle of their apartment. 

The pizza guy clears his throat. 

"I thought this might hap-" 

There's another flash of light. Karkat looks away. He grabs Terezi by the hair and pulls her away from the light, forcing her to look in the other direction. She yells. 

"Sorry, man, you'll get used to the light." The Other Pizza Guy says, standing back in the closet; he steps out, towards Karkat, and hands him a piece of paper, "You'll need this. And future Terezi said to pass on a message... Something about Seers." 

And with another burst of life, he's gone. Nobody breathes. 

"Who the hell are you?" Terezi demands, turning to the pizza guy once again. 

"I told you. I'm the pizza guy." He holds out his spare hand, "But my friends call me Dave."


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I suck at writing. Have a nice day!

"That was us." Terezi says, recovering quickly from shock as she sits on the kitchen counter and sips a soda, "That was us. We came to this apartment... From the future!" She swings her legs back and forth, "We were visited by our future selves!" 

She's incredibly excited, Dave The Pizza Guy looks almost anxious, and Karkat is leaning against the counter, picking at the band-aid on his face. Those people... Them... Dave told them that they were their future selves and the note told them that they needed to save the world. Just like that: SAVE THE WORLD. Ever since then, Karkat hasn't been able to breathe properly. Because these things, they just don't happen in real life. Do they? The others seem to think so. 

"Yes." Dave adjusts his sunglasses, "That was us from the future. I guess Aradia sent us back here to pass on this message to ourselves. Gives us a bit more time. More time to save the world. Whatever the hell it means by that. I could have been more specific." 

"What's an Aradia?" asks Terezi. 

"This note is from you?" Karkat scowls at him, "You from the future?" 

He studies the note. It's unfamiliar handwriting, he doesn't recognise it, and he'd know if it was his or Terezi's. It's hastily written as if whoever wrote it didn't have enough time. And if that really was them, time-travelling from the future, then that's almost a pun. Karkat groans, internally. Living with Terezi has been having a terrible effect on him.

"That's my handwriting." Dave says, scratching his head, "I really need to find a better way of communicating with myself than sending these vague notes through time and space. It never ends well. I keep losing them in other dimensions on the way." 

Karkat's mouth hangs open. "You aren't fucking joking about the time travel." 

"I'm not joking." Dave says, almost smiling at him, "Oh, yeah. Should have mentioned that right at start. I'm a pizza guy and a time-traveller."

"Both?" Terezi just seems shocked that he has two jobs. 

"The two aren't mutually exclusive." Dave says. He stops slouching against the counter and begins to pace back and forth in their tiny kitchen. "I really couldn't have left more information than save the world. Not even a date. And what was that bullshit about seers? Man, time-travel can be really dumb sometimes." 

"Maybe you just suck at it." Terezi suggests and he chuckles. 

"Maybe, man." Dave says, a small smile on his face, "Anyway, you guys know all about me now. Who are you guys that I'm about to go on a magical time-travel adventure with?"

"I'm Karkat." Karkat says, before Terezi can introduce him with some ridiculous made-up name, "This is Terezi." 

"And you two are-?" Dave doesn't finish, looking between them, assuming that they're dating. Everybody assumes they're dating. Just because they share an apartment, a DVD collection, and sometimes, a wardrobe.

"Gay." Terezi says, pointedly, "Roommates that share an apartment but entirely separate homosexual bedrooms. I have a cute girlfriend and everything." Suddenly, she freezes, "Crap, is this saving the world thing going to take long? We had plans." 

"Time-travel." Karkat says, "We have all the time in the world." 

"Uh..." Dave looks unsure, "It doesn't really work like that." 

"Of course it doesn't." Karkat rolls his eyes. 

"I can explain. Or rather, we can explain." Dave says, "Do you guys own a laptop?" 

A few minutes later and he's using Terezi's laptop, which is resting on the kitchen counter next to where she's sitting so that she can make sure he's not looking through her files. God only knows what Terezi has saved on her computer. Probably memes. He's using her Skype and typing in a contact; a friend of his, he says, that they need to meet. When Terezi asks why, he just shakes his head and tells them that they'll get it. 

While he sets up the computer, Karkat stands beside him and peers over his shoulder. 

"So, you're really a time-traveller." Karkat is still confused. 

"And I deliver pizza." Dave adds, helpfully, "Time-travel is just something I do on the side. More of a hobby than a job, if you know what I mean. Though, I suppose I could profit if I started charging people every time I help them out." He sends a video request, "Nah. You don't get into time-travel for the money. You get into it for the cool future stuff." 

"Or the cool past stuff." The girl on the laptop chirrups. 

Both of you jump. Neither of you had realised that Dave's friend had accepted the video request already and is staring at you through the laptop screen. She's nobody particularly spectacular, looking about as ordinary as anybody, but there's a sparkle in her eyes. She looks tanned, as if she's on vacation somewhere hot, and what little of the wall behind her you can make out seems to be oddly made. Like it was built by Romans or something. 

"Who are you?" Terezi raises an eyebrow, jumping off the counter to get a better look. 

"I'm Aradia. I'm a time-traveller too." She smiles widely at you, like she's just found out and she's incredibly excited about it, "Like Dave. But not. It's not simple, you know. Dave can only go forwards in time and I can only go backwards. It's really difficult to meet in the middle. We only managed it once and that was Alexander Hamilton's death day." 

Dave shrugs. "Wanted to see if the musical got it right." 

"You can only go backwards in time." Terezi considers, "So, you're in the past right now." 

"Yes!" Aradia grins at her, "Egypt. Around the time of King Tut. I'm going to try and see if I can steal- ahem, borrow some artefacts to study. Find out the truth about his death. All that fun stuff!" 

"If you're in the past, how come we can talk to you?" Karkat demands, leaning closer to Dave so that he can get a better look at the girl. She's hispanic too, like Dave, and has thick curly hair tied in a ponytail. Her eyes are wide and eager with excitement. Her eyes are a shade of brown so bright that they could easily be confused for red. She looks like a kid dressed up as Cleopatra for Halloween with too much eyeliner and too much fake gold. 

"I'm constantly travelling backwards through time, silly." Aradia tells them, "I started when the universe ends and I've been going backwards ever since. I have all the best technology ever invented. Things you haven't even seen yet! Microsoft comes out with a computer about two hundred years into your future and the webcam is excellent! My calls can transcend time!" 

"If you're always going backwards and you're always going forwards, aren't you eventually going to get stuck? She'll get stuck in the past, you'll get stuck in the future?" Karkat says, more to Dave than Aradia. 

"Lemme explain a little more." Dave tells them, "Time is a line. I jump forwards on the line but the loop has to work perfectly with the timeline. If it doesn't, the timeline glitches and I get sent back to where I started. Pretty cool, right? And Aradia jumps backwards. But if she stops jumping and stays where she is, she can just live normally and progress forwards through time at the exact same speed as you guys. Get it?" 

"Nope." Terezi shakes her head. 

"You're gonna have to learn as we go along then." Dave says, "Because according to us from the future, we have to save the world from being destroyed. Most likely by some kind of big event. That's normally what it is." He sighs, "Sucks. I was looking forward to being just a normal pizza delivery guy for a while." 

"Wait, you're a pizza guy?" Aradia laughs, "Dave, that's wonderful! You finally achieved your dream." And it doesn't sound like she's being sarcastic, "Who are your new friends?" 

"This is Terezi, this is Karkat." Dave tells her, "I was meant to deliver their pizza but then, ourselves from the future fell out of their closet and told us to save the world." 

"Save the world from what?" Terezi asks, "How are we supposed to find out what it is we're supposed to do if we don't know what goes wrong in the first place?" 

"I'll search the timelines and see if I can find out what's going to happen." Aradia says, from inside the laptop, "But it's a lot of data to sift through! I'll try and keep you updated. Wibbly wobbly, timey wimey, Dave!" 

She salutes him and vice versa before she signs off and her face disappears from the screen. 

"Wibbly wobbly what?" Terezi blinks. 

"You guys don't watch Doctor Who." Dave looks surprised, "Oh my god. After we save the world, we have to watch the shit out of it together. You'll love it." 

It takes Aradia an hour or so to call them back, which should have been enough time for Karkat to find out all he wanted to know about Dave. But the fucker kept changing the subject so that they didn't have to talk about him. Karkat got really frustrated but Dave just smirked at him, asking Terezi questions about her instead. She tells him all about how Karkat inherited their apartment from his parents, after they died, and how they'd moved in together because they were such great friends in high school. She tells him about the comic books she's always wanted to draw and the ones that she reads, the ones about The Blind Justice. They're written by some author nobody knows anything about that just calls herself the Legislacerator. 

"She's super top secret. She doesn't do any interviews." Terezi is grinning, like she always does when she gets talking about the Legislacerator, "I've been investigating her for years but I can't even found her real name or her birthday or anything. It's like she doesn't even exist." 

"Huh." Dave says, like he's really intrigued by this, "That's really fucking weird." 

"No shit, Sherlock." Karkat remarks, "Half the Internet is trying to track this fucker down." 

Dave considers this for a moment before abruptly changing the subject. "So, you said that you had a girlfriend? What's she like?"

Digging around in her pocket for her phone, Terezi shows off the pictures of her girlfriend that she has on her phone. Karkat has seen them all before so he stops listening and instead decides to replay the morning in his head. Something wasn't right about all of it, about the whole situation, but he wasn't sure what it was yet. Something didn't make sense. 

Unfortunately, right when it was on the tip of his tongue, Aradia got back to them. 

"One week from now, the president is going to be found dead in room 413B in Skaia City Hotel." She announces, reading from her screen, "The people renting that room were Mr and Mr Captor-Ampora and they refused to comment on the matter. They claim they were not in the room at the time of the murder, however. The door lock appeared broken and the room the president was staying in had a broken window. Death appeared to be caused by asphyxiation." 

"Which room was it?" Karkat asks, "If we book the room ahead of time, we change the future, right? The president doesn't get murdered, we all live happily ever after, and I get to eat my cold pizza that tastes entirely of disappointment." 

"You." Dave says, "Are a genius."

And just like that, he's on his phone trying to find the hotel's number. 

Meanwhile, Aradia answers some of the questions that they have. 

"If you're reading timelines, does that mean that everything in time is fixed in place?" Karkat asks, "Like the third Harry Potter where their future actions are the only reason that their past actions worked in the first place." 

"No, no, it's not like that at all." Aradia says, acting like the teacher that tries to be cool, "Actually, time can be changed and rewritten. But only sometimes. If it damages or creates an alternate timeline, we have to delete it. I have a diagram explaining it somewhere." 

"It's so complicated." Terezi complains, "How do you even time-travel? Do you just concentrate really hard on where you want to go and then you get there?" 

Aradia holds up her arm so they can see the weird thing strapped to her wrist. It looks exactly the same as Dave's and she explains that they were given to them but she doesn't know who exactly gave them to them. She also can't remember being born, growing up, or where she even comes from. The first thing she can remember is a flash of bright light and then just existing. 

"Sometimes, I have weird dreams though..." Aradia muses. 

"Does Dave have those too?" Karkat inquires. 

"Why do you care?" Terezi grins at him, "Do you like him or something?" 

Karkat's face burns. "I'm just asking, back the fuck off. You were thinking it too." 

"Actually, I was thinking about dragons." She sticks her tongue out. 

"Ooh, the dragons are so cool!" Aradia chimes in. 

Before she can explain, Dave returns and announces that he's booked the hotel room a week from now. Then, he adds, it's only got one bed so they'll all have to share. Karkat's face is capable of frying eggs at this point but Dave says he's just kidding. 

"Are we going to time-travel?" Terezi asks. 

"Word of advice." Aradia says, from the laptop screen, "Keep your eyes closed. Looking into the time vortex directly can really damage your eyes. Especially if they're already damaged, Terezi. You need to be careful!" 

Terezi blinks a couple of times and looks at the ground, rubbing her sneakers together unsurely. Looking at her now, Karkat can remember the first time he met her in freshman year and neither of them really knew who they were or where they were going. How quiet and reserved she'd seemed initially, when he'd first glanced at her. And then, how she'd grabbed him by the arm and told him that they could be whatever they wanted and walked into the cafeteria like she didn't care that people were staring. And they've been friends ever since. 

Aradia says goodbye and then, Dave tells them how it's going to work. Karkat would feel less nervous if he didn't explain it so casually with several rambling metaphors and innuendos that didn't make much sense. He summarised it like this:

"So, there's big flash of light that will make every person with a phonetic reflex within five yards sneeze so hard that they orgasm and then we will literally fall through a hole in time to the future where you will probably either puke or explode or something gross." 

Then, Dave takes both him and Terezi by the hand. Karkat worries because his hand is clammy and sweaty and disgusting and Dave is going to notice. He locks eyes with Terezi and she mouths "gay" at him, teasingly, and smirks a little. 

"Okay, hold on." Dave says and Karkat swears that Dave squeezes his hand. 

And Karkat remembers to close his eyes. He feels his stomach drop like he's on the highest rollercoaster and the world seems to explode around him in a rush of sound that makes his ears pop. When he feels the ground again, it's with his hands and knees and he's realised quickly that he's collapsed. Beside him, he can hear Terezi groaning like she just woke up from a long dream and pushing herself up onto her knees. A hand rubs against his back. 

"You okay, Kit Kat?" It's Dave, ugh, and he's helping him back to his feet. 

Karkat tries to stand up straight but his legs wobble and he nearly falls. 

Dave catches him. And Karkat feels like an idiot. 

"Woah, there." Dave laughs, quietly. 

"Go fuck yourself." Karkat grumbles, pushing him away and somehow managing not to fall down again, "If this is the future, it already fucking sucks."

They're standing in the apartment, in the middle of it, and initially it seems like nothing has changed. But on closer inspection, Karkat spots the noticeboard that Terezi normally pins flyers and post-it notes and ideas about the Legislacerator on has been thrown across the room and is lying against the wall. Other than that, there's no change. 

"No..." Terezi says, quietly, crossing the room on wobbly legs and inspecting her noticeboard. She doesn't say anything for a moment, shoving something in her pocket, before picking up the noticeboard and hanging it back up in it's usual place. 

"Well, it's been a week." Dave checks the newspaper lying on the coffee table, "We nailed it. Now, we just gotta get to the hotel and check into our room." 

On the stairs, Karkat keeps trying to catch up with Dave so that he can ask him more questions. Does time-travel always make him feel as sick as it made Karkat feel? What happens if they run into their future selves? But Dave just keeps walking, too fast for him to keep up. They all step outside and head down the front steps, Terezi hanging onto Karkat's arm like she used to when she was blind. He has no idea why she's decided to cling like this today of all days but he goes along with it. Mainly because he can't shake her off. 

"Hi, Mrs Leijon!" Terezi calls to the old woman across the street, stopping to wave. 

"Who's that?" Dave asks, pointing at the old woman with his thumb.

"That's Mrs Leijon. She lives downstairs from us. She used to have a wife who lived with her but she died a few years back." Karkat makes sure Terezi can't hear before adding, "She's also completely fucking insane. She has this dragon tattoo on her arm so Terezi thinks she's cool but whenever I go downstairs to get the mail, she always tries to talk to me about some TV show she likes. Something about Doctors. I just pretend I can't hear her." 

"Sounds like a cool old lady." Dave sounds impressed, "Anyway, this is my ride." 

He kicks a bicycle leaning against the edge of the building lightly, just enough to jolt it upwards. He catches it by the handle bars and strokes them like a forty year old man having a midlife crisis strokes his expensive car. It's a battered old bike that looks as if it's been run over by a truck or something heavier. There's a lot of duct tape holding it together. 

"I've seen otakus in better shape than that heap of junk." Karkat snorts, dismissively. 

Terezi peers at the bike eagerly, looking a little too close. "Is it a magical time-travel bike? Can you jump through dimensions with it?" 

"Holy shit, you're actually serious." Karkat says, "Of course it doesn't do any of that bullshit. It's just a regular bike." He looks to Dave, suddenly unsure, "Right?"

"Actually, it's not just any old bike." Dave says, dramatically, "It has a basket on it for me to carry the pizzas in. Not any old regular bike has one of those." He sits on the bike, "See if you can both fit in the basket." 

Karkat rolls his eyes. "I'll bring the car round."


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> does it count as foreshadowing when it's really fucking obvious
> 
> also i suck at writing karkat and dave realistically help

"Shotgun." Terezi calls, immediately, and jumps into the passenger seat. Dave crawls into the back. And Karkat puts the car back into drive and sets off towards the heart of the city. 

"Isn't this great, Karkat?" Terezi grins at him, "I can't even remember the last time we went into the city together. It was probably sometime before..." She sees the look on his face and doesn't continue, "Anyway, can we stop by the comic book store before we go to the hotel? The Legislacerator just released a special limited edition of the spin-off series: Team 413. I've heard it's even more mysterious than the other ones!" 

"You want me to stop at the comic book store?" Karkat raises an eyebrow, "Are you fucking serious? Terezi, you know that we are trying to stop an assassin of our beloved president today, right? That information didn't bypass you, did it?" 

"Well, what am I supposed to do while we wait for the murder to happen?" Terezi asks. 

Karkat sighs and resists the urge to hit his head against the steering wheel. He ends up pulling over by the comic book store so that she can run in and grab the stupid thing. At least it keeps her quiet for the rest of the car ride. 

Dave checks into the hotel room under a fake name while they hide behind a pot plant, before they all slip upstairs to the fourth floor to lay low there. There's only one double bed in the middle of the room, which Dave and Terezi sit on, flicking through all the shitty channels on the TV in search of decent movies. Karkat sits in the chair by the desk and doesn't rise to Terezi's taunts about rom-coms. He just looks at them both and thinks that he doesn't belong here. He feels like he's in high school all over again, shut out of every group. Not cool enough to be popular, not smart enough to be a geek, not drunk enough to be a dropout. 

"Karkles, come sit on my lap." Terezi pats her knees, cackling, and he makes the same kind of joke he always makes. Some swearing, subtly self-deprecating remark. And he stays in his chair, telling them that he'll keep watch, and stares at the movie but doesn't see it. 

When night falls, they sleep in shifts and Karkat tells them he'll take the first one. He won't be able to sleep anyway- he'll just have to pretend when it's his turn. Terezi curls up on the bed and Dave looks at him through his shades like he's not sure what to make of him. But eventually, Dave falls asleep on the opposite side of the bed to Terezi. They're so far apart that out of context, Karkat would be sure they hated each other. 

He sits and scrolls through his blog, watching the night-bloggers lose their shit over snakes not having legs at all and spiders having too many and quoting Halsey songs and posting pictures of beautiful Korean people posing on pastel backgrounds. And he rests his head on the keyboard of his laptop, suddenly tired but far too awake at the same time. It's like his brain suddenly awakes but his eyelids are heavy. He's pulled out of it abruptly when he gets a skype message from somebody called apocalypseArisen.

_hey karkat_

_g0 0ut int0 the c0rrid0r s0 that i can see y0u_

_0h its aradia by the way_

Wordlessly, without even questioning it, Karkat steps out into the corridor without a key and lets the door fall closed heavily behind him, before remembering that he's meant to be keeping watch. He glances around. No sign of anybody. He tries the door handle, swears, and sinks down against the door. Looks like he'll have to wait for somebody to wake up and let him back in. He's not even sure why he followed the instructions of a girl he doesn't really know. 

"Hello, Karkat." She appears in a burst of light too, like a god or something, like Dave did. He shields his eyes by ducking his head so that his bangs fall in the way. When he looks up, he realises that something is different. This isn't the same Aradia. For one, she no longer has normal eyes but robot eyes, grey with bright blue pupils, and her clothes are made of metal. Her skin is silver. Her posture is stiff, robotic, unnatural almost. She just stands there, stares at him, like she's looking through him at the door behind him.

"What the fuck do you want?" Karkat demands, trying not to sound so tired. 

"Sorry to bother you." Aradia says, as if she was a neighbour coming round to borrow some butter or something, "It's late, isn't it? I've been struggling to understand entirely how humans work since I assumed this form." 

He stares as she sits next to him. "Are you from the future or something? Did we fuck up?"

"That's one way of putting it." Aradia shrugs and there's the sound of clock working grinding somewhere in her shoulders, "I guess I came back so that you could fix it. Every time you make a decision, it creates alternate timelines- some of which are doomed. There are only a few consistent timelines, which don't end horribly. Every other timeline splits off and runs parallel until they eventually come to an end. We call these doomed timelines. It's my responsibility to end these doomed timelines." She tilts her head slightly to one side, "I was created for the purpose of ending doomed timelines." 

"But Dave said something about loops." Karkat frowns, "Doesn't time-travel work in loops?" 

"Dave works in loops and circles. I work in lines. It's different. But in the end, we're working together to create the best possible future and past for your race." This Aradia clinks every time she moves, "I'm here to doom this timeline."

"Wait, wait!" Suddenly, Karkat is all too awake and this doesn't feel like a dream anymore; he gets to his feet and stumbles away from her, hands up like that's going to protect him, "Hold the fuck up, Robot Bitch. You don't have to doom this timeline, we can fix it. Whatever we fuck up, I can go out there and make sure it doesn't happen." 

She tilts her head to one side. 

"I've read the notes." Aradia says, blankly, empty, "This timeline doesn't work out. I have no choice but to end it." She raises her hands towards the ceiling and it begins to melt away, so that they can see the stars, "You can't distant yourself from them, Karkat. If you do that, there's no future for you or anybody else." 

The walls crumble slowly and it's like everything is just falling out of existence around him, as she moves her hands to pull everything away. And the entire time, the Robot Bitch doesn't have a single expression on her face like this is nothing to her. Karkat is too shocked to even do anything but yell furiously, clutching desperately at the floor, which is the only thing stopping him from falling out of existence. But as he watches, it's all sucked away into the universe. He's sitting on nothing, Robot Bitch is floating, and he's still yelling. 

The stars blink out one by one and he realises he's sobbing, furiously. 

TIMELINE SUCCESSFULLY DELETED.

Karkat snaps back to reality. What was that, a dream? A vision? Did any of it actually happen and if it did, is it normal that he can remember it? Is it possible to remember futures that never really happened? He lifts his head off his laptop and remembers the words of the robot that just killed him, regardless of it was real or not. He can't distant himself. Standing, he glances at where his roommate and a pizza guy are sprawled across the bed. Dave is hanging off the edge, almost falling, and Karkat gets up to push him gently back to safety. 

Unfortunately, he wakes up in the process. "Krkthheh?" 

"It's your shift, asshole." Karkat tells him, pretending like he didn't rescue him from waking up on the floor, "You better get your shit together because a president is gonna wind up dead sometime tonight and I'm not failing this quest because you're a lazy fucker."

"Five more minutes, Mom." Dave mumbles but he sits up, running a hand through his hair and fumbling to push his shades back on before he'll even think about opening his eyes, "Okay, Karkles, I've got this watch. Get some rest, man." 

And Dave pushes himself off the bed with a groan and the bed creaks a little, as he stands and stumbles to the desk chair. He takes a seat there, swiping up the remote and putting the TV on silent, channel hopping again. When Karkat doesn't immediately crash, he seems to realise that something isn't right and looks at him. And he pats his lap like Terezi did earlier. 

"You want a seat, Karkles." He says, so it doesn't sound like a question.

Karkat sits on the very end of the bed. "You wish, Strider." 

"Hey, a man can dream." Dave says and Karkat rolls his eyes, "What's up, Karkles?"

"Stop calling me that. Terezi made up that shit in high school." He groans, rubbing the bridge of his nose, and tries to think of how to phrase what he wants to say without sounding like a crazy person, "This time-travel shit is new to me, Dave. But you wrote the goddamn Bible on this fuckery, so tell me, is it normal for a robot version of your time-travelling girlfriend to show up and kill you in your dreams?" 

Dave actually looks concerned for half a moment.

"Bro, you met Arabot already?" He says, "I'm so jealous, it took me years of screwing up until she doomed me. Did she do the thing with the-" He mimics her arms sweeping around and wiping out the world with dramatic sound effects, "Because that's always enough to make any grown man shit the bed. Except me, obviously." 

Karkat obviously doesn't look convinced. 

"She's creepy." Dave amends, "She's not really Aradia. Well, she's one version of her. But there's so many duplicates of her that we figured we might as well put them to work, so they go around and end the bad timelines. I guess you got a bad end, man." 

"It didn't feel real, and then it did, and then it didn't." Karkat says.

Dave nods like this makes sense. "That's time-travel, bro. Takes a while getting used to how confusing it can be." He glances at Terezi, "Since it's just us bros, I'll confess this to you. You never really get used to it entirely." 

"You use the word bro too fucking much." Karkat almost laughs, "What are you so insecure about, Dave?" 

He means it as a joke but Dave's face falls. "Bunch of shit. Don't tell anyone though." 

"Who would I tell?" Karkat nods to his roommate, "She sees through everybody's bullshit, she's already figured out every single detail about your life." 

Dave nods. They sit in silence for a long moment with Dave spinning slowly on the desk chair, picking at the skin under his thumbnail, while Karkat sits on the end of the bed and watches him. One thing he's already noticed about Dave is that he's never normally serious. Always joking, always teasing. How come he sounded so serious when he said he was insecure? It was oddly out of character... But Karkat doesn't want to ask him about it. Instead, he keeps his eyes fixed on the floor for a moment before Dave speaks. When Dave speaks, he looks up again. 

"Hey, man." Dave stops picking at his thumb long enough to lean over and punch Karkat lightly on the shoulder, in what Karkat is prepared to call the "bro-iest" move ever, "I get that Arabot's visits can be kinda screwed up. You okay?" 

"I'm fine. Why wouldn't I be? It's not like a robot destroyed entire lives in that timeline or anything." Karkat huffs, "Why would anybody be upset by that?" 

"Hey, man." Dave repeats, "I'm really sorry you got sucked into this bullshit." 

Karkat shrugs. "Better than sitting at home all day and swearing at idiots on the Internet for their stupidity. Typing up reviews for shitty movies I never wanted to watch once, let alone several times. Wasting my time on Earth with trivial bullshit until the day I die." 

Dave looks like he wants to say something. Instead, he checks his watch that actually seems to function as a watch as well as a time-travel device. Karkat looks too and only sees a series of numbers and letters that he doesn't understand. It looks like some kind of complicated coding. Holy shit, the pizza guy might be smarter than him. 

"Well, it looks to be about time." Dave says, still looking at his watch. 

Dave stands up, brushing himself off, and offers Karkat a hand to pull him to his feet. Stubbornly, Karkat just bats his hand away and gets up himself, asking a million questions as he follows Dave to the door of the hotel room. Dave doesn't answer any of his questions, opening the door quietly and slipping out into the corridor, holding the door open for Karkat. Once they're both standing out in the corridor, door shut behind them, Karkat turns to him. 

"Why did we have to come out here?" He demands. 

"Nice scenery out here." Dave gestures up and down the fancy corridor, "Should appreciate it before the president's blood is splattered everywhere." 

Karkat visibly shudders in disgust.

"Terezi wasn't kidding, you're a real hemophobe." Dave looks surprised, like he was expecting it to be even more bullshit that a crazy girl had made up, "Shit, dude, I'm sorry. I figured she was just joking about that shit. I ain't met somebody with a genuine fear of blood before." 

"When did she tell you that?" Karkat asks, fiercely, and Dave looks anyway. 

"Oh, uh, you know, it came up." Dave shrugs, trying to look nonchalant. 

"You're an exceptionally shitty liar." Karkat informs him. 

Dave laughs. "I'm pretty crap at being a pizza delivery guy too." 

Karkat can't help it; he laughs. It's only quiet and rusty from not being used for so long but it's a laugh and suddenly, he's taken aback. He can't remember the last time he laughed at anything, not a time when he wasn't being sarcastic anyway. Since his parents died, he's been one of those angsty teens that mopes on street corners with their headphones- at least, that's how Terezi describes it, before asking how Gerard Way is faring these days with a cackle. He stares at Dave for a moment before shaking it off. The pizza guy made him laugh. So, what? It's not a big deal. But it is. But it isn't. And Dave is talking about something else. 

"So, Aradia was telling me about all the cool jobs in the future. And honestly, everything sounded cooler than just being kept as a servant in ancient Egypt with her, so I started jumping forward again. I was actually aiming for 2055 but I missed by a couple years." Dave is telling him how he became a pizza guy, "And-" 

He's changed the subject. Because the other one had made Karkat uncomfortable? 

He continues but Karkat has stopped listening. Years of being the kind of person that writes angry reviews of crappy movies online will make anyone capable of spotting the tiniest details. He can spot any background cameo, any romantic detail, the slightest hand brush of the actors on screen. He has found every single easter egg. Movement in the edge of his vision captures his attention instantly. Out of the corner of his eye, Karkat spots a door creaking open. A pair of eyes behind a mask and a mess of curly hair catches sight of him and stares. 

"Dave." Karkat says, urgently. 

"- so the head guy at the pizza place is... Huh?" Dave cuts off his story and follows Karkat's gaze, "Why are they-" 

It's a guy, Karkat decides, peering at the man pushing the door open. The guy has definitely noticed them and is staring hard as he opens the door. He seems to be alone. 

"Listen up, motherfuckers." A man steps out of the hotel room across the corridor, pointing a gun in their direction, "We're looking to hide a body. And you motherfuckers might want to get out of here if you don't want to get in trouble with the cops tomorrow." 

Could the guy shoot them from here? Probably. Karkat doesn't know anything about guns. 

Karkat is gripping something to keep himself steady. He realises that "something" is Dave's hand and lets go abruptly, staring at the end of the gun in shock. He's never actually seen somebody point a gun except in movies. The guy takes a step towards them and Karkat can't break his eyes away from the end of the gun. He still has so many questions. 

"Yo, dude. You killed the president?" Dave addresses the guy, casually, holding his hands up in what looks like a sincere surrender. 

"What?" The guy's eyes seem to widen, "How'd you know about that, motherfucker?" 

Dave walks up to him, taking long, slow steps, until he's standing right in front of the gun. He holds a hand out like he wants to shake the guy's hand. And he introduces himself as Dave The Security Guard To The President Guy. The man with the gun looks like he doubts this but he can't afford to take any risks. Dave is close enough that the guy is able to poke him in the chest with the gun and Karkat inhales sharply. 

"Purrloz, what should I do with the body?" A woman with thick, frizzy hair joins the man at the door; she studies the situation for a moment, before the man mutters something to her and she disappears back into the room. 

"You brought your girlfriend? Hot date, man." Dave is still joking. Why is he joking at a time like this? There is a gun pointing directly at his heart. It would only take one pull of a trigger and he would be dead. But Dave doesn't seem to give two shits. 

"Last chance to get out of here, kid." says the man. He's tall and thin, built like the skeleton of a giant, and dressed in all black from head to toe. His skin is as dark as Karkat's, tattoos sprawling up his neck and down what little they can see of his wrists. If Karkat squints, he can see what looks like a bible quote on the inside of the man's hand. He feels offended. 

"What are you gonna do?" Dave crosses his arms, taking a few steps backwards like he's daring him to follow him. There's a decent distance between him and the man now. Karkat almost sighs in relief. 

The man looks at Dave for a good minute. And then, he pulls the trigger.

Dave doesn't cough up blood or anything dramatic like that, nothing like the movies. He doesn't press a hand to his wound and fall to the ground, giving dramatic final words. It's anticlimactic. Dave just glances down at where the bullet must have lodged itself in him and crumples slowly onto the floor, landing on his knees and keeling over at the guy's feet. He doesn't move. 

"No-!" Karkat yells, involuntarily, and the guy turns to him. 

"You gonna keep your mouth shut, motherfucker?" The man asks. 

Karkat nods, trying not to shatter into pieces. 

The man lowers the gun and heads back into the hotel room that his accomplice disappeared into. Karkat collapses against the wall he was standing by, letting his head fall down and rest on his knees. He can't even bring himself to look at where Dave's body is slumped, unmoving in the middle of the corridor. All he can do is keep still and close his eyes tightly and pretend that none of this is happening. This is just a dream, right? He's going to wake up and be on the couch with Terezi reading their weekly horoscopes. For a moment, he's almost convinced himself, staring into the swirling darkness of his own eyelids. 

A bright flash of light that pierces his eyelids and makes him snap to attention brings him back to reality. He looks up from his knees and sees Aradia standing directly in front of him, dressed in all black with her hair pulled back from her face. There's a bruise on her left cheek and a bandage tied around her upper arm, like she's just been facing something worse. She's smiling though, like nothing is wrong. Like Dave isn't dead. A guy that Karkat doesn't know is standing next to her and looking as confused as Karkat has been feeling all day. 

"Karkat!" Aradia says, brightly, "Oh, I guess I got the wrong time. That can happen sometimes; I miss the right day and end up on the wrong one." She crouches down beside him, "Why are you sitting down here all sad like that?" 

Karkat barely manages to point at where Dave is slumped, his hand is shaking so much. 

"He's not really dead, you know." Aradia tells him, "He's faking. It was just a blank." 

"How do you know?" Karkat demands, peering at where Dave is pretty convincingly lying completely still with his eyes half-open and his breathing non-existent. He can't see his face. 

"I read it in a comic. Plus, I saw future Dave like five minutes ago and he told me to tell you that he wasn't dead if I ever bumped into you." She shakes her head, smiling, "He's the reason all the timelines are such a mess." She pulls Karkat to his feet, "Anyway, shouldn't you wake Terezi before those criminals try to hide the body in your room?" 

"AA." The guy Karkat doesn't know says, "What the actual fuck is going on?" 

"He's not dead?" Karkat looks at Dave's body and Aradia shushes him. 

"Not too loud. Those thugs might come back and finish him off if they realise he isn't dead." Aradia adjusts the messenger bag slung across her body and Karkat notices it for the first time; it looks as if it's stuffed full of something and he swears something in there reflects in the light, "Dave, you might as well get up, you asshole. We all know you're alive." 

Slowly, Dave's eyelids flutter and his pupils dart around, checking for anybody waiting to attack him. Then, he pushes himself up off the ground and onto his knees instead. He looks at Karkat, grinning like he's about to make some sort of joke. When he sees Karkat's face, his grin drops suddenly from his face and he gets to his feet quickly, walking over. 

"Dude, psych. I faked it." Dave tells him, before glancing at Aradia, "Is it normal for humans to turn that pale? He's not going to puke, right?" 

"He's probably in shock, you dick." says Aradia's new friend, who Karkat is liking more by the minute, "He's going to need to sit down and recover. He just saw his boyfriend get shot." 

"Not my boyfriend. He's just some douchebag that was meant to deliver my pizza." Karkat says and Dave seems to flinch, "I'm fine, really. I'm going to kill Dave later but-" He looks at Aradia, "What the fuck is going on? Did we do something wrong? The president still died." 

"Is this the year that the president gets murdered?" Aradia's friend looks curious, "This is the year that everything goes to shit." 

"Who's your new buddy?" Dave asks. 

"This is Sollux, I found him a little way in the future." Aradia says, "If you can have your little companions, so can I. This is the Rose to my Doctor. We-" 

"This might seem like a really stupid statement." Karkat says, cutting her off, "But there are criminals in that hotel room that could come out and murder us any second. Why are we just standing around chatting like a bunch of school girls at a water fountain?" 

"Because it's in the comic! I've already read this entire conversation years in the future." Aradia beams at him, "But I did come here for a reason. You failed at saving the president. I'm going to fix it. We're here to fix the timeline. But first, there are some things in your past that you need to make sure happen. Vital points in your life and Terezi's that shape your entire future and if you don't go back in time and make sure they happen, nothing will work out right. You have to change some things. Otherwise, this timeline won't work out. Do you understand?" 

"I'll get Terezi and we can go discuss it over coffee." Dave says. 

Stupidly, Karkat presumes that he's joking.


End file.
